The 2010 Military Communications Conference - Unclassified Program - Waveforms and Signal Processing Track

Exposing Textile Antennas for Harsh Environment

Tero Kaija, Juha Lilja, and Pekka Salonen
Patria Aviation Oy Tampere, Finland
AbstractTextile antennas as part of soldier's garment is commonly exposed to various harsh operational conditions. It is crucial that the communication link between soldiers is not compromised by the environmental conditions. The effect of water, ice and snow on the performance of fully textile antenna is studied in this paper. The effects of environmental exposure on antenna performance is validated via experimental tests, using a satellite communication systems; Iridium for a bi-directional satellite data transmission and GPS for a reception tests. During the tests the antenna is immersed into water, exposed to ice and snow while the communication link remains active. These results show that thorough understanding of the textile antenna design process leads to an optimal antenna performance even under the harsh environmental conditions. Keywords-Textile Antennas, Wearable Antennas
Figure 1. Battlefield scenario utilizing networking enabled capabilities.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The future soldiers are equipped with evermore complex communication systems. Using wide-area networking and onboard computers, soldiers will be more aware of the action on the battlefield. The requirement for delivering the situational awareness information is growing fast. Additionally, the future scenarios include also the implementation of integrated physiological monitoring into the soldiers equipment. Since more information is collected from on-body and off-body domains it must be processed and shared among medics and field commanders effectively. The value of threat reconnaissance is depending on how quickly that information can be relayed to the soldier on the battlefield. The soldiers in the future will have more and more information immediately available as sketched in Figure 1. In order to communicate in network-centric battlefield environment, the individual soldier needs to have several antennas to maintain the communication between different wireless systems. Fixed and rigid antennas will limit the nominal movement and may increase the possibility to be revealed in a combat situation. Conformal antennas are a potential substitute for rigid antennas in soldier garments. Textile antennas are a one group of conformal antennas. They have given a lot of attention in the recent publications [1]-[3]. Since textile antennas can be also fabricated from ballistic materials, they can be considered very suitable for military use as well in material point of view [4]. As a part of soldiers outfit, the textile antenna is exposed to various conditions that potentially degrade the antenna performance. The effect of bending has been previously studied in [5]-[7]. Bending has a tendency to detune the antenna, which will cause less power to be delivered to the actual load.

Several authors have studied textile antenna structures that can tolerate the effect of bending [7]-[8]. However, employing textile antennas as a part of real wireless communication system is not so widely studied. In this paper, two selected real life use cases are exploited to demonstrate the performance of textile antenna under harsh operational conditions. The paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the requirements for the antenna robustness. Textile antenna under study is briefly introduced in section III. The principle how Iridium and GPS systems are used in antenna tests is described in Section IV. The permittivity of water is discussed in section V. Real use case measurements are shown in Section VI. This section includes also a discussion about the obtained results. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in Section VII. II. REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ANTENNA ROBUSTNESS

The system operation reliability is pronounced especially in military applications. Information link must sustain harsh operational conditions. The selection of the antenna materials plays a paramount role in optimal design of such textile antennas. Likewise in conventional antenna design the selection of mechanical and electrical material characteristics are a trade-off for optimal system performance. The operational environment exposes the soldier-mounted or wearable antennas under frequent bending and physical abrasion. These requirements are unique to wearable antennas. In addition, textile materials require special attention in terms of fiber material, structural characteristics of the fabric, and water resistance. Careful design of the weaving pattern and weaving density one can greatly affect the fabric stretchability, compressibility, and water absorbance.

978-1-4244-8180-4/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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The above-mentioned characteristics are related to mechanical performance. The next step is to consider electrical material characteristics from the set of mechanically acceptable materials, which is equal in conventional antenna design process. However, in the textile antenna design process the optimum system performance is commonly achieved with a compound of various materials, not just one. This result from the fact that in textile antenna design the radome, i.e., outer layer or the protective layer of the antenna must be designed simultaneously with the main antenna itself. The antennas, which must withstand frequent bending, should be designed to tolerate the resonance frequency shifting. This leads to a wideband antenna designs. How wideband the antenna should be, depends on the application bandwidth, the bending curvature, axial ratio, and the system requirements The textile antenna design steps can be summarized in general level as: x x x x System specification translated into antenna requirements. Selection and inspection of material mechanical properties Selection and inspection of material electrical properties based on above set. Select one or more materials whose compound meets the requirements in system, mechanical and electrical performance. Traditional (wideband) antenna design. Design validation and verification. Type approval if required. III. TEXTILE ANTENNA LABORATORY PERFORMANCE IV.

Figure 2. Measured Gain in dBic (left) and AR in dB (right).

x x x

Figure 3. Zenith axial ratio and gain as a function frequency.

The low profile of patch antennas makes them ideal candidates for body-worn applications. Moreover, the ground plane of the structure effectively shields the body tissues affecting the antenna performance. The antenna under test is a circularly polarized patch comprising only textile materials [4]. The substrate is made by stacking low-loss ballistic textiles to make the core of the antenna. Furthermore, the outer surfaces of the textile stack are optimized for the attachment of the conductive layers by adding a smooth Cordura layers to both sides of the substrate. The antenna is tested with and without any cover material. The textile cover pouch is made out of an abrasion resistant waterproof fabric. The conductive layers are fabricated using a woven metal-plated polyester yarn. The radiating element as well as the ground plane is sewed to the substrate using a polyester yarn with optimized sewing technique. No adhesives are used to maintain the antenna efficiency. The measured antenna efficiency is between 70 % and 80 % in the frequency band of interest. The measured 3-D gain and axial ratio is shown in Figure 2. Furthermore, the measured radiation properties as a function of frequency are shown in Figure 3. The zenith gain and axial ratio are presented. The RHCP gain remains above 5dBic over the GPS and Iridium bands. The axial ratio is optimized for Iridium system.

METHODS TO EVALUATE TEXTILE ANTENNAS AS PART OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Two different commercial satellite communication systems were selected for antenna evaluation purposes. The following subchapters will give a brief introduction about the test setups to validate textile antenna performance. A. Antenna testing concept with GPS receiver The ratio of the power of the GPS carrier wave C (dBW) to the noise power density NO (dBW-Hz) is denoted as C/NO. This is the main parameter to characterize the sensitivity of the GPS unit. The value of the minimum C/NO where the acquisition can occur depends on the receiver. The communication with a commercial GPS receiver module is implemented usually via NMEA messages. After the GPS receiver has successfully got a position fix, it is possible to read from the GPS Satellites in View ($GPGSV) message the signal to noise ratios of the tracked satellites. The number of the satellites tracked is obviously dependent of the reception quality. However, by reading this SNR data directly from the receiver, it is possible to make tests with the passive antenna and observe the effects in the SNR values. The signal to noise ratios in the GSV messages is given in dBHz (C/NO).

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To evaluate the performance of the GPS antenna, an Open-sky Test is conducted. The measurement is carried out in the open area with no obstacles above the radio. A Vincotech GPS receiver module A1084-B is used in this study with passive antenna connection. It is based on the SiRFstarIII chipset. The GPS receiver module is interfaced using a commercial microcontroller. The written test software prints out the NMEA data on an LCD display. The software makes it possible to access to the full content of the GSV message. In this case the message is divided into separate sub-messages, since is the receiver is capable of receiving signals from up to 20 GPS satellites. The GPS test setup is shown in Figure 4.

margin can be observed from the signal strength indicator visible on the phone display. Furthermore, the ultimate limit is reached when the phone is not able to establish a connection with the satellite. It is emphasized that even though the display indicates that the phone is connected with the satellites, it may not able to make a connection due to weak signal strength. V. ON THE EFFECT OF ICE, WATER, AND SNOW ON TEXTILE ANTENNA PERFORMANCE

A. Permittivity considerations for different forms of water Pure water has a permittivity of approximately 81. This, however, depends on the factors such as the salinity, temperature, and frequency. Water Debye model can be applied to approximate water behavior at the frequency range of interest. When frozen, the electrical behavior of water changes dramatically. The permittivity drops to 3.15 [9], and is nearly independent of frequency. Electrical behavior of snow is very close to ice because it can be considered as a mixture of air and ice. However, the density of snow as well as the amount of the impurities affects the attenuation of a propagating wave. The tests carried out in this setup use pure water to examine the effect of ice and water. Secondly, the snow tests are carried out with snow that exists in the nature with all its impurities. B. Initial antenna measurements The change of the electrical properties of water in different states was validated by measurements. First, a textile antenna without cover was immersed into water and the soaked antenna was frozen at -10 C. The whole structure was bounded by an ice sheet, and the substrate was thus a combination of ice and low-permittivity textile yarns. After measuring the frozen antenna, the center frequency had reduced from 1.6 GHz to 1.23 GHz compared to the dry state. Next, the ice was melted, and the return loss was measured. The resonances were shifted further due to the high permittivity of liquid water. The measured return losses of the antenna without the cover are shown in Figure 6. . The center frequency of the wet antenna was 882 MHz. After drying the antenna performance recovered the initial, i.e., dry case.

Figure 4. GPS receiver test setup

B. Antenna testing concept with Iridium phone Iridium is a worldwide, low earth orbiting satellite system designed to support voice, data, fax, and paging. The Iridium phone employed during the tests was Motorola 9505A. The phone operates at L-band (1616 1626.5 MHz). The phone lends itself to antenna testing since there is a possibility to interface it with an external antenna via special TNC connector adapter. The phone along with the adapter is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Antenna interface of the Iridium phone

According to the data sheet of the phone, the link budget margin is 15 dB. This is for the phones own rigid antenna. This gives a certain reference point since it is possible to make a comparison to the original antenna. The reduction in the link

Figure 6. Return loss of dry, frozen and soaked antenna w/o cover.

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Next, the antenna with fabric cover pouch was immersed to water and left outdoors to freeze for two weeks to imitate the natural low-temperature case. The temperature varied between -10 C and -20 C. Snow built up on top of the antenna, and the frozen antenna was measured first with snow on top. The results are shown in Figure 7. It is seen that the snow has only small effect on the measured return loss. More importantly, the return loss of the antenna with the cover was more immune to frequency fluctuation than the antenna without the cover. This was due to the fact that the water was not absorbed into the antenna structure, but only as a thin surface on top the fabric cover pouch. The center frequencies of the antennas with and without the cover were reduced by factors of 0.96 and 0.77, respectively, when comparing them to the dry antenna. After drying the antenna recovered to the initial case.

TABLE I. Test index Test1 Test2 Test3 Test4 Test5 Test6 Test7 Test8

TEST CASE DESCRIPTIONS FOR GPS RECEIVER TESTS

Test Rationale

Dry antenna, unbent, with cover pouch Dry antenna, bent along Y-axis with approx. 65 mm bending radius, with cover pouch Dry antenna, bent along X-axis with approx. 65 mm bending radius, with cover pouch Three layers of completely wet paper towel on top of dry antenna, with cover pouch Full immersion into water. Results taken after antenna is pulled out of the water bucket After full immersion, the antenna is bent extremely by hand (bending radius approx 25mm), with cover pouch Frozen antenna, without a cover pouch Melted antenna with remaining moisture, without cover pouch

Figure 8. Example of taking the data out of the displayed NMEA message.

Figure 7. Return loss of dry antenna compared with return loss of frozen antenna. The antenna utilizes a fabric radome.

VI.

TEXTILE ANTENNA EVALUATION USING SATELLITE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

The first measurement session included tests 1-6. These were made using a textile antenna with a fabric, waterproof cover pouch. The second measurement session required some preparations before execution. The fabric cover pouch was removed and the antenna was placed into a mould, filled with water and was left to freeze for an overnight. The next day the tests 7-8 were performed. It is emphasized that because of the different time of test the satellite IDs are different, which can be seen from the data points. The collected data is transferred to a more illustrative format and shown in Figure 9. and Figure 10.
SNR values versus satellite IDs
60 50 40 dBHz 30 20 10 0 3 5 6 7 8 10 15 19 21 24 25 28 Satellite IDs Test1 Test2 Test3 Test4 Test5 Test6

A. GPS receiver tests A set of test cases are designed to cover the effect of water, ice and mechanical bending. Reference point for the measurements is Test1, which is dry, unbent antenna. The target in selecting the different test cases is to cover most of the realistic harsh conditions that the textile antenna integrated as part of clothing could be exposed to. For example, the antenna element is possible to freeze if the weather gets below zero degrees centigrade after a rain pour has moisturized the antenna element. Full descriptions of the tests are listed in TABLE I. The results of all the above mentioned tests are collected from the GSV message data as shown in Figure 8. Satellite ID and the corresponding C/NO value are recorded. The maximum number of tracked satellites was 12 during the testing. Tests were performed under open sky conditions.

Figure 9. Measured SNR values of the GPS test cases 1-6.

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SNR values versus satellite IDs

40 35 30 dBHz 25 20 15 10 5 0 9 11 14 17 19 20 22 25 26 27 28 32 Satellite IDs Test7 Test8

B. Iridium phone tests The Iridium tests are one step at more practical level compared to the GPS tests. There are no absolute measured values to show the system performance and the available margin in the link budget in contrast to certain environmental conditions. But this is quite common in real practical cases. One can characterize and measure a single component (e.g. an antenna) in laboratory conditions. But eventually it has to be tested in real use case scenarios and try how it survives in the extreme conditions. This is the purpose in the following tests. 1) Exposure of water The full immersion into a water bucket can be considered an extreme test for a textile antenna. Depending on the material selections, the antenna substrate can absorb a lot of moisture, which effectively detunes the antenna out of the correct operation band. The immersion test with Iridium phone is shown in Figure 12.

Figure 10. Measured SNR values of the GPS test cases 7-8.

The results shown in Figure 9. indicates that the dry antenna tests (Test 1-3, 5) provides in average higher SNRs compared to cases (Test 4, 6). The result is significant in sense that the antenna after full submersion into a water bucket is still able to provide similar performance to dry antennas. The slightly moist antenna in addition to extreme bending (Test6) gives slightly degraded SNR values. However, this can be partially explained by the fact that the extreme bending condition was created by hand. Bringing the human tissue close to the radiating element will have an effect on the antenna radiation properties. The worst result in terms of SNRs from the first measurement session was obtained from Test4. Multiple layers of completely wet paper towel effectively cause a thin water layer on top of the antenna, and therefore, degrade the antenna performance. The second measurement session included testing of completely frozen and moist antennas without a cover pouch. An example of completely frozen antenna is shown in Figure 11. The results of tests 7-8 indicates clearly lower SNR values on average, compared to the first session measurements. Especially in the melted case (Test8) the receiver is not capable of calculating the SNR for several satellites. Therefore, the measurement results show that a water tight fabric cover bag clearly helps retain the antenna operable in harsh environmental conditions. Textile antennas without a waterproof cover are subject to moisture absorption, which can degrade the antenna performance, especially if the antenna substrate is made out of a material that absorbs moisture.

Figure 12. Immersion test while Iridium call is established and active.

Test call was established between Iridium and GSM phones. While the call was active, textile antenna interfaced with the Iridium phone was immersed into a water bucket. Obviously, phone call data was not going through the network when antenna remained below the water surface. However, the connection was restored instantly after the antenna was taken out of the bucket. The antenna could be held completely under water for several seconds without disconnecting the active call. 2) Exposure of snow The second test relates to winter conditions. Approximately two centimeters of snow was piled up on top of the antenna as shown in Figure 13. The second test call was made in order to verify that the excess snow on top of the antenna does not have significant effect on the communication link performance. Test call was made successfully without any additional distortion in the audio signal. The snow on top of the antenna was dry snow since the outdoor temperature was well below zero degrees centigrade.

Figure 11. Frozen antenna

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Figure 14. Bending of the antenna in multiple directions

Figure 13. Pile of snow on top of the antenna.

Future work will include destructive testing of the antenna element. The probability that antenna element experiences a destructive incident is reasonable high under a combat situation. Therefore such tests as a shotgun test and accelerated wear and tear test are well justified. Furthermore, successful experimental test in cross-country conditions imitating nominal soldier movement e.g. running, walking, crawling would bring the textile antennas even closer to enter into wider operational usage. REFERENCES
[1] P. Salonen, J. Kim, and Y. Rahmat-Samii, Dual-band E-Shaped Patch Wearable Textile Antenna, in IEEE Antennas Propag. Int. Symp. Dig., 2005, pp. 466-469. P. Salonen, F. Yang, Y. Rahmat-Samii, and M. Kivikoski, WEBGA Wearable Electromagnetic BandGap Antenna, in IEEE Antennas Propag. Int. Symp. Dig, 2004, pp. 451-454. S. Zhu, R. Langley. Dual-Band Wearable Textile Antenna on an EBG Substrate, IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 57, No. 4, April 2009, pp. 926 935. J. Lilja and P. Salonen, Textile Material Characterization for Softwear Antennas, MILCOM:09, Oct. 18-21, 2009, Boston, MA, USA. P. Salonen and Y. Rahmat-Samii, "Textile Antennas: Effects of Antenna Bending on Input Matching and Impedance Bandwidth," IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, Vol. 22, Issue 12, pp. 18 - 22, Dec. 2007. P. Salonen, M. Keskilammi, and Y. Rahmat-Samii, Textile Antennas: Effect of Antenna Bending on Radiation Pattern and Efficiency, in IEEE Antennas Propag. Int. Symp. Dig, 2008, pp. 1-4. .Q. Bai and R. Langley, Crumpled Textile Antennas, IEEE Electronics Letters, Vol. 45, No. 9, pp. April 2009. E. kaivanto, J. Lilja, M. Berg, E. Salonen, P. Salonen, Circularly Polarized Textile Antenna for Personal Satellite Communication, in Proc. Eur. Conf. on Antennas Propag., EuCap10, Spain, Apr. 2010. J. H. Jiang, and D. L. Wu, Ice and Water Permittivities for Millimeter and Sub-Millimeter Remote Sensing Applications, Atmospheric Science Letters, 5: 146-151, Nov. 2004

3) Mechanical stress (Bending) The third test exposes the antenna to mechanical stress. The textile antenna was bent during the active phone call. Iridium system mobile terminal antennas employ right-handed circular polarization. Bending of the antenna potentially changes the antenna polarization from circular to linear which effectively reduces the link margin. Small bending radii were employed to create severe mechanical stress as shown in Figure 14. Furthermore, the antenna was bent along both major axis and also in diagonal directions. Again, the reading of the field strength indicator and the quality of the audio signal were the parameters that were used to evaluate to transmission/reception quality. Test call was made successfully despite the bending of the antenna. VII. CONCLUSIONS Textile antenna operating at L-band was evaluated as part of commercial satellite communication systems. Antenna was exposed to different kind of extreme operational conditions. The purpose was to study and verify the laboratory tested antenna also in real use cases. Furthermore, it was shown that textile antenna design process must be thoroughly understood in order to design antennas for demanding environmental conditions. Moisture and temperature variations are generally expected in wearable systems, especially applications for soldiers. The results show that it is possible to design fully functional purely textile antenna for demanding environmental conditions where high moisture and/or low temperatures, i.e., sub-zero temperatures exists.

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